Architecture

Austria underwent a building boom during the Gothic and Renaissance periods, but the country’s golden age of architecture is widely considered to be the 1600s. Late in the century, once the Turkish threat had subsided, Baroque architecture flourished in the capital city of Vienna and elsewhere. In the early 19th century, a new architectural trend emerged: the Biedermeier style. Elegant, functional, representative of a new art of living, Biedermeier is associated with the era of peace and prosperity known as the Vormär period . More modern times saw the rise of the Jugendstil (German for ‘youth style’), launched in Vienna at the turn of the 20th centuryby painter Gustav Klimt and architect Otto Wagner, among others.